The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [116]
“Not a good idea,” I said, pulling away. Keegan was hardly taller than me; his eyes, so close to mine, were warm. Kind.
“Why not? I’ve been wanting to do that since I saw you again.”
“For one, I don’t live here anymore,” I said.
“You’re here now,” he said, running one hand along my arm.
“Yes.” I tried to summon images of Yoshi on our tiny patio or lifting his weights in the living room, a fine sheen of sweat rising on his arms. The cobblestone streets, flowers spilling over fences, the trembling earth, all these flashed through my thoughts and were gone, until all I could remember was the empty static of the last call I’d made.
Keegan’s lips were on mine again, and mine on his.
I caught myself, stepped away. Distantly, a boat droned.
“You’re stirring everything up,” I said.
“I know.” He grinned. “I’m all shook up, too.” He touched my arm again. “Never mind, Lucy in the sky. We’ll head back and pretend it never happened.”
Not possible, of course. As we walked back, climbing along the side of the stream and then following our own trail through the trees, I was aware of Keegan with every step, every breath. Once, he stopped in a clearing and pointed out the flattened brush, the faint marks of hooves, and I imagined the white deer gathering here, as dense as snow that covered everything in winter, alive and magical and silent. I wanted to pretend the intervening years had never happened, that Keegan and I were still in that time before loss. We were quieter after that, moving softly through the forest and then across the open field, past the locked and silent chapel, but though I imagined the deer everywhere, as soft as rabbits, as fleeing as gazelle, as white as snowdrifts, we did not even glimpse them.
“Keegan,” I said, as he pulled open the door of his van, but then I couldn’t think what else to tell him.
He smiled, waved, and drove away.
Chapter 14
ON THE PATIO THAT EVENING, ANDY WAS POURING WINE FOR my mother—it was my mother, though it took me a second to recognize her, her hair so short, silvery gray and feathery, the emerald silk top with a mandarin collar resting so elegantly against her neck. She was wearing white slacks and gold sandals, and though she smiled when she saw me and stood up to hug me, her arm free of its cast and warm against my back, I was disconcerted, as if I’d stumbled into an intimate dinner party between strangers.
“Have a seat, Lucy,” Andy said, reaching for the extra glass they’d placed on the table and pouring me some wine. He was dressed up, too, wearing a tie. “We’re having a drink to celebrate your mother’s losing that cast, and then we’re headed off to Skaneateles. Your mother, I discovered, has never had the pleasure of dinner at Doug’s, which is without question the best fish fry I’ve ever had. So we’re going to do that, and then I have tickets to a violin concert in a church by the lake. You’re welcome to join us.” He glanced at my mother, who smiled her agreement. “I’m sure we could pick up another ticket when we get there.”
I thanked him and declined, truly regretful, because Skaneateles was always beautiful on a summer evening, the lake a clear turquoise blue, the village carefully preserved in all its charming late-nineteenth-century splendor. “Sounds like a nice evening, though,” I added, making a mental note about Doug’s Fish Fry, which sounded like a good place to take Yoshi when—or if—he ever got here.
“Are you going out again?” my mother asked.
“Maybe,” I said vaguely, though I was. Keegan had called an hour earlier and invited me on a boat ride because it was supposed to be such a nice evening. I said I’d like that, and he said okay, I’ll pick you up, and I said no, I’ll meet you at the glassworks around eight o’clock. Beneath this conversation, so mundane on the surface, ran the powerful currents of